KEY POINTS:
The poor people of the world should be thankful that Mike Moore sits on the United Nations' Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor rather than John Minto.
Minto's understanding of what enables nations to create and distribute wealth is abysmal. Maybe one does not need any understanding of such matters to be a spokesman on peace and justice, but when dealing with economic growth and development it surely helps.
He claims that, given the makeup of the commissioners (which includes the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto), the commission can only increase poverty rather than reduce it, evidently because at least some of the other commissioners are Americans - a grievous sin.
Minto tells us that such Americans can only create poverty because "the US has the highest levels of poverty in the Western World (more than 30 million)" and asks, "Why would this be?"
Well, the answer is simple. The United States Official Poverty Rate (the OPR) is based on calculations that are available from 1959 onwards. For the total population of the US, this rate declined by nearly half over this period, from 22.4 per cent in 1959 to 12.7 per cent in 2004. It seems Americans do know something about reducing poverty.
Also, millions of Americans can be declared to be in poverty because the UN poverty index is based on the percentage of the population with disposable incomes of less than 50 per cent of the median.
On this basis, those "poverty-stricken" American families not only have hot and cold clean running water, flush toilets and electricity but typically have one or more cars, at least one television, several telephones and even own their own homes.
The UN test means that when the median American household income reaches US$1 million a year, a family living on US$499,000 a year will still be deemed to be living "in poverty". Using the New Zealand index, they could be earning $600,000 a year and still be "in poverty".
I am not at all sure why Minto assumes that Americans are experts on creating poverty rather than wealth. Some poverty indices have truly bizarre outcomes - especially those which focus on where families sit relative to average income. Minto bewails the fact that the very rich in the US have very high incomes.
One way to reduce poverty might be to persuade them to up stakes and take their wealth to other less fortunate nations.
However, if Bill Gates decided to migrate to a poor country like New Zealand, his settlement here could increase the number of New Zealand families officially living in poverty because his vast income would considerably increase the average household income. And hence throw hundreds, if not thousands, more families, and even their children, into poverty.
We always have to examine the fine print when it comes to measurements of poverty. Would we turn Bill Gates away because of the wrong choice of "average"?
Minto says that "property rights are there to benefit the wealthy and the middle class. They mean much less, if anything, to people who live in poverty".
By his own measure, many Maori families live in poverty. Perhaps he should explain to them why property rights don't matter and why their concerns over their property rights to the seabed and foreshore are of no consequence and, presumably, misguided.
As Hernando de Soto explains, secure property rights are important to people living on the margin. If poor people own a piece of land and hence the buildings on it, when fire strikes they work to save the house. If they are squatters they rush to save the furniture.
Because Minto is living in a democracy, under the rule of law, he enjoys rights to property in his own life and labour, his personal effects, land, building, car, works of art - including his own writings - and even his religious or ideological beliefs.
I am sure he appreciates these rights in all his property, even if he seems to think they are of little consequence to others less well off than himself. If some burglar steals his furniture, will he not call the police?
When the ordinary people of England fought to secure their property rights, they were all living in poverty by contemporary standards. The incomes of those Americans in the "wild" western states, who fought to win their private land rights off the Federal Government, were lower than those of many poor Africans today. Mike Moore is not peddling myths about property rights. He is only repeating what more and more African politicians and analysts are saying on behalf of their own people.
Their constant theme is "We want trade - not aid". And it is remarkably difficult to trade in anything unless you have secure property rights in the things you want to sell.
If Minto visited these countries and tried to tell the people that property rights don't count, he would be laughed out of the room - unless, of course, he was talking to someone like President Mugabe, who certainly shares his opinions.
* Owen McShane is director for the Centre for Resource Management Studies.
